scholarly journals Investigating Suggestions for Increasing the Throughput Rate of IS Students

10.28945/2678 ◽  
2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsa Naude ◽  
Tertia Horne
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Distance Education ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Provincial Government ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Throughput Rate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Second Year

During the past few years science faculties at tertiary education institutions in South Africa have had to face increasing pressure from national as well as provincial government bodies to improve the student throughput rate. Various suggestions have been made to achieve this goal. This paper investigates the viability of two of these suggestions for solving the throughput problem. It is part of a larger reflexive research project investigating various aspects of the teaching and learning of Computing and IS through distance education. Information from the assignment records and the examination marks of students for a specific Computer Science second year module with a practical component was used for this study.

Interactive Learning of Recursion

2012 ◽  
pp. 254-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Pérez-Carrasco ◽  
J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Computer Science Education ◽  
Interactive Learning ◽  
The Past

One concept that has proved to be especially difficult to comprehend in computer science education is recursion. This chapter provides an overview of past efforts on the teaching of recursion. The authors first introduce concepts and models about the teaching and learning of recursion. In particular, they identify models used by teachers to explain recursion (i.e. conceptual models) and models used by students in their learning process (i.e. mental models). Afterwards, they review the teaching methods used in the past. Finally, the authors survey visualization and animation systems for recursion, explaining how they support conceptual models and how they try to remove wrong mental models. They also include a comprehensive technical comparison of the systems and review the evaluations these systems have been subject to.

Perspectives on Blended Open Distance Education Learning and Teaching in a South African Context

2010 ◽  
pp. 20-49
Author(s):  
Shawren Singh ◽  
Hsuan Lorraine Liang
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Distance Education ◽  
Blended Learning ◽  
South African ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
African Context ◽  
The University

In this chapter, we will discuss the blended learning approach that has been adopted by the University of South Africa (an open and distance learning tertiary education institute). We will discuss our perspectives on using these blended learning approaches and tools in order to facilitate our teaching. We will then provide a comparison on the advantages and disadvantages of some of the blended approaches we have used. We will also discuss the future trends of the use of blended approaches in the context of open distance education and learning. Lastly, we will conclude this chapter by providing our perspectives on the blended learning and teaching approaches adopted by the University of South Africa.

The Power of Double Vision: Tradition and Social Intervention in African Puppet Performance

2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335
Author(s):  
Marie Kruger
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Intervention ◽  
Double Vision ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The University ◽  
Representative Object

The appeal of the puppet lies partly in its dual nature: it is at once a representative object without life while at the same time it enacts the imagined life with which it is endowed by the puppeteer. Marie Kruger argues that this duality makes puppetry a uniquely effective way of questioning the very traditional values it appears to embody, and so of stimulating a sense of the need for social change. She relates her argument to the long tradition of puppetry among the Bamana people of Mali, and specifically to the performance of the Bin Sogo bo, an animal masquerade in which the ‘characters’ adumbrate human qualities with effective ambiguity. Marie Kruger is Chair of the Department of Drama at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where puppetry is offered as a performance option. She is the author of Puppetry: a Guide for Beginners and has also published in the South Africa Theatre Journal. Over the past twenty years she has directed numerous puppet productions for all ages, and is currently leading a research project to document the nature and application of African puppet traditions.

scholarly journals Investigating the Perception of Stakeholders on Soft Skills Development of Students: Evidence from South Africa

10.28945/3417 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estelle Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Problem Statement ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Interdisciplinary Journal ◽  
Development Of Students

[The final form of this paper was published in the journal Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Lifelong Learning.] Soft skills are becoming increasingly important and will be critical for success in the Information Systems profession. Employers complain about a lack in soft skills among graduates from tertiary education institutions. No agreement exists about what these skills actually are, which are of importance, and how acquiring these soft skills should be approached in higher education. The aim of this paper is to research the perceptions of lecturers, industry, and students on soft skills development of students and to identify important soft skills that need to be developed. The paper starts with a problem statement emphasizing the importance of soft skills and the possible lack thereof. This is followed by a literature review, a description of the methodology followed for this research, the results, conclusion, and the references. The research was done at a university in South Africa. Questionnaires consisting of open questions were distributed to lecturers, industry, and students respectively, and qualitative analysis was done on the results. Results show that stakeholders feel that soft skills of students are not developed adequately, that there is some uncertainty about who should be responsible for developing soft skills, and that the development of soft skills is seen as a difficult task. A list is compiled of the most important soft skills according to literature, lecturers, industry, and students. This list can be used in further research on the soft skills of IT-students. Recommendations are made for the teaching and learning of soft skills.

Debate as a learning activity for teaching programming: a case in the subject of machine learning

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Uma Gunasilan
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
Learning Styles ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Learning Activity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Emerging Issues

PurposeDebates are well known to encompass a variety of skills we would like higher education candidates to embody when they graduate.Design/methodology/approachDebates in a classroom with computer science as the main subject has been popular in high schools particularly with emerging issues around the area, however it does not have as an extensive similar documented outreach in tertiary education, particularly in the area of hard computer sciences and more recent concentrations of computer science, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud computing.FindingsTo explore further, the debate dataset had more methodologies applied and was split into training and testing sets, whose results were then compared by a standardized measure: Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) which is currently standard in the industry. The rationale of the approach is to quantify that debate activities have an immensely positive impact towards both the teaching and learning in technical subjects and needs to be more often and robustly used within higher education.Originality/valueThe rationale of the approach is that classroom debate activities equip students with verbal and social learning styles and an opportunity to engage with content in a way that is more comfortable than working with traditional lecture-and-laboratory style learning.

Informetrics Education in Library and Information Science (LIS) Departments at Universities in South Africa

Mousaion ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nkosingiphile Zungu ◽  
Dennis N. Ocholla
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Library And Information Science ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The University

This study sought to explore informetrics education in Library and Information Science (LIS) departments at universities in South Africa. We adopted the pragmatic epistemology and pluralistic ontology for our study. The mixed research methods we employed were survey and content analysis. The survey comprised a questionnaire by means of which we collected data from the LIS heads of department (HODs) and informetrics lecturers, and we employed content analysis to analyse the content of course outlines. The study’s population was the LIS departments at the surveyed tertiary education institutions in South Africa. Nine LIS departments were targeted, and eight of them responded. At the time of the study, five of the nine LIS departments were found to offer informetrics education, namely those at the University of Cape Town, University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of Limpopo, University of the Western Cape, and University of Zululand. We established that the LIS department at the University of Zululand was the only department that offered informetrics education as an autonomous module/course as part of the full LIS programme. Other LIS departments offered it as a chapter or a unit in a module, and the University of Limpopo offered it at an undergraduate level. We found that the institutions surveyed offered informetrics education at different study levels and notches and that there was no uniformity in the content of the informetrics courses across the institutions’ LIS departments. Our findings indicated that the blended learning method was widely used, comprising case studies, group discussions, and online teaching and learning methods. We found that the various LIS departments experienced challenges (e.g. teaching capacity, student preparedness, and ICT support), and we suggested solutions to meet these challenges. We noted that informetrics education in South Africa was limited and we recommended more awareness creation, curricula development, short courses and awareness of global trends.

The Southern Gateway to Africa

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 108-111
Author(s):  
Quinton P. Redcliffe ◽  
Lesley Y. Shackleton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Flow ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Prior to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, South African tertiary education institutions were relatively isolated from the growing global flow of students around the world. Over the past five years this has changed significantly. For example, between 1996 and 1997 the number of students from the United States spending a semester abroad in South Africa increased by 49 percent to a total of 617 students, making South Africa the most popular destination in Africa. By 1999, the University of Cape Town (UCT) alone, one of 21 universities in South Africa, welcomed 205 semester-study-abroad students, 145 of them from the United States.

scholarly journals Perceptions of Students with Disabilities on Reasonable Accommodation at a Tertiary Education: A Case of a Rural University in Limpopo Province, South Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 592-600
Author(s):  
M.H. Mukwevho ◽  
A. Gadisi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Organizational Support ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Assistive Technologies ◽  
Reasonable Accommodation ◽  
Learning Material ◽  
Perceptions Of Students ◽  
The University

The advent of democracy in South Africa has put initiatives to redress social injustice suffered by women and people with disabilities. Enrollment of students with disabilities at universities increases yearly, influencing an increase in buying of assistive technologies to enable a teaching and learning environment. This paper explores the perceptions of students with disabilities on the role of reasonable accommodation in terms of accessibility and facilitation of teaching and learning at the university based on the human rights approach. A pre-corvid 19 pandemic survey used a convergent parallel mixed-method design to evaluate perceptions of reasonable accommodation on the campus. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected roughly simultaneously and integrated into the interpretation of the overall results. A focus group comprised of the representatives of students with disabilities was interviewed. The surveyed population comprised all students with disabilities between the ages of 18 to 25 registered with the Disability Support Unit (DSU) of the University of Venda. The questionnaires collected reasonable accommodation perceptions and satisfaction rates from students about organizational support and training. The distributed questionnaires produced a 90% response rate. The findings highlighted that students with disabilities encountered barriers of inaccessibility to classrooms and residents. Adequate learning material is a barrier for students with visual disabilities. Institutional budget and item costs render buying assistive technologies and building new infrastructures for students with disabilities a constraint. Policy and practice in the institution remain a limitation to interfacing education and disability smoothly.

eLearning and Distance Education in Higher Education Accessibility

2017 ◽  
pp. 219-229
Author(s):  
Gezani Phineas Baloyi
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Distance Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Prior Learning ◽  
Education Access

The Ministry of Education in South Africa has identified distance education as a system that should extend educational opportunities and provide access to individuals who do not have the opportunity to study fulltime. The White Paper 3 - the National Plan for higher education (DoE, 2001a) advocates an increase in the general participation rate in public higher education in South Africa, with the aim of facilitating lifelong learning, developing the skills base of the country and redressing historical inequities in the provision of education. Badat (2005) adds that through distance education access is presented to people who would not have the opportunity to study fulltime because of work commitments, personal and social circumstances, geographical distance or poor quality or inadequate prior learning experiences. Distance education offer flexible learning to students. The flexibility of learning at a distance using new technologies gives students an opportunity to study while working. The technology can make an impact in supporting teaching and learning.

eLearning and Distance Education in Higher Education Accessibility

2020 ◽  
pp. 534-544
Author(s):  
Gezani Phineas Baloyi
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Distance Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Prior Learning ◽  
Education Access

The Ministry of Education in South Africa has identified distance education as a system that should extend educational opportunities and provide access to individuals who do not have the opportunity to study fulltime. The White Paper 3 - the National Plan for higher education (DoE, 2001a) advocates an increase in the general participation rate in public higher education in South Africa, with the aim of facilitating lifelong learning, developing the skills base of the country and redressing historical inequities in the provision of education. Badat (2005) adds that through distance education access is presented to people who would not have the opportunity to study fulltime because of work commitments, personal and social circumstances, geographical distance or poor quality or inadequate prior learning experiences. Distance education offer flexible learning to students. The flexibility of learning at a distance using new technologies gives students an opportunity to study while working. The technology can make an impact in supporting teaching and learning.

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